Khartoum says committed to aid access - UN

The Sudanese government has said it is committed to the humanitarian needs of conflict-affected populations, despite the continued denial of humanitarian access to hundreds of thousands of people in the south of the country. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima told journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Friday that in meetings with Sudanese First Vice-President Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha and Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il, the government had expressed its continued commitment to the UN-led Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS). Taha had instructed the competent Sudanese government authorities to review the issue of humanitarian access, and in particular the imposition of a 10-day ban on the airspace over Eastern and Western Equatoria in the far south of the country, Oshima said. Oshima also met senior representatives of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in Nairobi. The suspension of aid activities caused by the ban had affected 800,000 people in Eastern and Western Equatoria; stopped food deliveries to some 350,000 to 450,000 people throughout southern Sudan; and meant that a polio vaccination campaign targeting 791,000 children under five would not take place as scheduled, according to a UN briefing. The United States government on Thursday condemned the flight ban over Equatoria, as well as the imposition of additional restrictions on other parts of rebel-controlled Sudan. "The denial of access continues the GOS [Government of Sudan] pattern of using humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war," Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and special humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said in a statement. New restrictions imposed at the beginning of October on flights to the Nuba Mountains, and on over 60 locations in areas under the control of the SPLM/A represented the "most restrictive monthly flight clearance placed on OLS in many years", Natsios said. Restrictions placed on delivery of aid to the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, were "particularly egregious" given the Nuba ceasefire agreement signed by the SPLM/A and the government in January, he added. The SPLM/A called the denial of access to the Nubas an "arrogant violation" of the humanitarian aspect of the ceasefire agreement. "This is a direct violation of the explicit terms of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire, which has been touted by many as a model of how peace can be extended in Sudan," an SPLM/A spokesman, George Garang, said in a statement on Thursday. The Sudanese government has, on several occasions since March, increased the number of flight-denied locations, putting it at loggerheads with aid agencies over the crucial issue of access to conflict-affected populations. A group of seven international aid agencies working in southern Sudan on Friday urged the UN to send a "clear and unambiguous message" to the warring parties requesting unfettered humanitarian access to affected populations. In a Friday statement, a CARE International spokeswoman called for "unequivocal, unrelenting and convergent pressure from the international community" to resolve the issue. Freedom of access to vulnerable populations - an international humanitarian principle - is guaranteed under a beneficiary protocol of OLS, which established principles for the protection and provision of aid to war-affected populations in Sudan.